Ringing Forums

I think that Cheltenham St Mark might have one, or at last did.

Cheltenham St Mark have become a cashless tower as of a year ago. We use a system called iZettle https://www.zettle.com/gb which costs £30 to set up and has a fee of 1.75% per transaction. It consists of a card reader, connected by Bluetooth to a mobile phone, so when payments are made either by contactless or chip and pin, the money is transferred direct to our account and an e-receipt can be issued. Other similar systems are available at about the same price. It works with any bank account.

We really like the system as it ensure funds are processed directly to our bank thus reducing risk and providing a direct audit trail for gift aid purposes. It also means no cash is in the tower - a particular benefit for ground floor rings. We use it for all use it for all tower donations, taking payments at events (branch fish and chip supper most recently) and peal fees. It could also be used for taking large donations by card and can be carried anywhere. We have found donations actually increase as people are more willing to make a £5 contactless donation than hand over a £5 note!

Where people only have cash or bands all want to chip in, (very unusual) we ask that one person makes a payment and they then sort it out in the pub. So far feedback has all been positive.

iZettle do offer some additional banking services we do not use, such as phone payments and account management. However even the basic service, combine with online banking makes our treasurers life so much easier and is support by the church.

If anyone wants a chat do message me ringingsimon1980@btinternet.com or come and try the system out by making a donation.

I paid a contractless peal fee at St Paul's in the Jewellery Quarter B'ham the other day. It was all very efficient.

Our church has a SumUp machine from https://sumup.co.uk/ (or Amazon). We have the 3G cellular version for £69. This doesn’t need WiFi or pairing to a mobile phone. Transactions are received via BACS into the church account with a transaction fee of around 1.2%. Definitely paid for itself many times over! Very well received and used for everything from weekly collection, raffle tickets and even Ukraine donations.

Previous posts have described "attended" solutions: the owner has to be told and enter the donation amount. There are alternatively unattended contactless machines which will give a selectable (say £3, £5 or£10) donation operable by the donor. We have one at church but it cost £250 to buy and standing charges can be about the same. Has anyone found a cheaper source?

We use SumUp - very successful and popular